If you happen to be kicking back and watching TV over the Holidays, chances are you are going to see a Best Buy Commercial. Best Buy’s new commercial campaign is called, “Gifts That Do”. [Ryan Rusnak] created a beverage cannon using a mini-fridge, air compressor, servo motors, and network connectivity with an ioBridge gateway. Using his smartphone, Ryan selects, aims, and fires a “beverage” over 20 feet to himself sitting on the couch in front of his flat screen TV from LG. The TV being a gift from his mom. Best Buy was inspired by Ryan’s project and featured him on their latest advertisement. Check it out on YouTube!

Congrats, Ryan! It’s great seeing an ioBridge project on TV mixed in with a movie marathon of The Christmas Story, football, and reruns of Seinfeld.

We all have been hearing about the Internet of Things and Internet-connected refrigerators – fridges that tweet, fridges that suggest recipes, etc. Ryan Rusnak took that concept one stop further by strapping an air cannon to a to a mini-fridge and adding Internet control with an ioBridge module. Using an iPhone, Ryan’s creation allows someone to select a beer, aim the fridge, and shoot the beer across the room — a truly remarkable invention. And in addition, Ryan is able to monitor and control the temperature of the fridge to make sure his choice beers are staying cold.

Ryan released the beer cannon around New Years 2011, and since then, he has captured the imaginations of TV producers behind great shows on the Science Channel, Discovery, and The History Channel. The producers were creating a new series called, JUNKies for the Science Channel, where people turn junk into new things. They wanted to recreate Ryan’s mini-fridge beer cannon as part of one of the episodes. Hopefully, this episode will introduce the mainstream into Internet-control of things and inspire a whole new crop of innovations.

The “beer cannon” episode of JUNKies premieres on the Science Channel on September 8, 2011 at 10pm (EST). For more information about JUNKies, visit the Science Channel website.